Do They Have Blue-light Specials On-line?

TECH TIDBITS

December 22, 1996|L.A. LOREK Business Writer

With fewer days between Thanksgiving and Christmas this year, convenience has become a priority to consumers.

People have started turning to computers for that shopping edge. On-line retail purchases are projected to reach $194 million during the holiday shopping season, according to a recent Jupiter Communications report.

Among the ease-of-use features of on-line shopping: the ability to browse stores and complete purchases 24 hours a day, seven days a week, from the comfort of home and searchable databases of product descriptions. Gift-picking services and delivery incentives help drive the sales.

"Internet shopping has not yet experienced the extensive growth expected in 1996 because of the lack of a secure payment standard. However, due to recent growth in the number of big-name retailers and increased consumer comfort with the medium, we believe that the snowball of on-line shopping is gaining speed," said Nicole Vanderbilt, senior analyst at Jupiter Communications.

Paging everyone?

One of the fastest-growing technology trends in the '90s has been the use of pagers.

By the end of 1995, more than 34.5 million pagers were in use, a 31 percent increase from 1994.

Double-digit growth is also expected for this year. The numbers have risen steadily since the mid-1980s, and industry predictions estimate that 61 million pagers will be in use by 2000.

Research from Motorola, the world's largest pager manufacturer with a plant in Boynton Beach, indicates that pagers, originally the business users' wireless choice, have quickly become the communications tool of choice for families.

More than 50 percent of new customers are using pagers for personal, not business, reasons, according to Motorola.

Parents pay for the majority of pagers teens carry so they can keep in touch. A recent poll found that 20 percent of teen-agers have at one time or another used a pager to communicate with family, friends and employers.

Fifteen percent of 16and 17-year-olds own pagers, and 17 percent of 18and 19-year-olds own pagers. They use pagers to get rides home, to hear from their employers about schedule changes and to communicate with friends and dates.

Business directory on the Web

Dun & Bradstreet and Lycos have unveiled an on-line business-to-business directory featuring detailed information on 60,000 public and private U.S. companies with sites on the World Wide Web.

The service, called CompaniesOnline, available at (http://www.companiesonline.com), will benefit anyone seeking business information - including entrepreneurs, investors, researchers, buyers and sellers.

The directory, which includes banner advertising, distributes information in three stages: a page displaying a list of all candidates that match the user's search criteria, a detailed company information page and a page with company-supplied advertising information.

South Florida Web site reviews

-- FLORIDA LEVEL & TRANSIT

http://www.fltinc.com The site for a 40-year-old Fort Lauderdale company assists surveyors, engineers and others interested in learning about the company's products and services. The site is also linked to the company's laser division, LASR, at (http://www.lsrinc.com). LASR handles construction laser sales and service.

-- L.F.C.

http://www.wwdir.com/eatgame.html If you need a recipe for buffalo steaks cooked in Jack Daniels sauce, check this out. It is the site for Fort Lauderdale-based L.F.C.'s gourmet exotic game meats merchant. You can send e-mail requesting cooking instructions, nutritional information or recipes for your favorite game meats.

-- PIPER COMMUNITY SCHOOL

http://www.piper.org Piper High School's Community School in Sunrise has crafted a Web site that contains information about the adult-education program. It offers evening and weekend classes on many popular computer software programs and other subjects.

Web site reviews from Excite!

-- COMPUTER MAGAZINES-TOP 100 COMPUTER MAGAZINES http://www.hooked.net/netvalley/top100mag.html You may disagree with some of the Sacramento, Calif., Internet-consulting and publishing company's choices, but you will just as likely find some you might never have heard of, perhaps even a new favorite or two.

-- ZIP2 http://www.zip2.com/ Remember those big, fat, heavy books called the Yellow Pages? Soon, they will be a relic of the past. Zip2 Yellow Pages allows the user to search for more than 16 million businesses nationwide. Another neat trick is Door to Door Directions, which provides directions between any two addresses.